And the Murray Chass award goes to…

Way to go, Ron. Most mere mortals simply choose to mock the use of advanced statistical data to find market inefficiencies (which is the WHOLE STUPID POINT OF MONEYBALL, YOU DIPSH*T!), you admit your ignorance and actually flaunt it. I’m only disappointed that you didn’t accuse Theo and his front office of living in’their mom’s basements.

You refer to “OBP” as if it were some new-fangled creation. Ron, all it does is measure how often a player GETS ON BASE per plate appearance. Which, if I remember correctly, is a pretty useful thing when trying to SCORE RUNS!

And “OPS”….ooooh boogly woogly spooky! It simply adds OBP plus Slugging. Slugging %, last I checked, includes those bygone things like Home Runs.

I’ll even pardon your lack of understanding about UZR and the other stats since admittedly, I can’t calcuate them, either. However, I understand their concept and appreciate the attempt to quantify the previously-unquantifiable. UZR isn’t perfect, however it’s a good tool to use when evaluating a player’s defensive skills. Fielding %…great, it measures how much you can catch of those you can get to. It ignores those you weren’t able to get but probably should have, or others in the same position would have. These are all tools in coming to organizational decisions about significant spending decisions. Every well-run organization, in baseball and otherwise, have departments full of smart people who develop and utilize as many tools as possible in order to make the best possible decision. In the corporate world, OBP is replaced by NPV, UZR with IRR. And once someone comes up with a better way to evaluate and predict the future, we’ll use that, too. Solid organizations do not make significant investments merely based on one or two metrics, or simply hunches. What worked yesterday doesn’t mean it will work next week. Evolution of the decision-making process. It’s not quite linear in a 45 degree upward tilt, but it sure as heck ain’t flat.

Let’s quickly get back to the larger issue, Ron. There are only a few things you can do to win a game, which I’ll summarize below:

Outscore your opponent

Hold your opponent to to fewer runs than you

You might discern that those two things are, in fact, the same damn thing.

The RedSox added the #1 free agent pitcher available this year, giving them a dynamite rotation, both in terms of upside and depth. They also did something pretty smart:

They avoided an expensive long term committment to a player with which they had very real concerns about his ability to stay healthy due to knee “issues”

In place of that, they added three players who can field as well as any (see point #2 above) and can still handle the bat fairly well.

As a Yanks fan, I have to applaud Theo and his team for their work this off-season. They improved the area of their team that needed the greatest improvement (defense) and strengthened their already very good pitching. And they did it in a way that that still enables them to have payroll flexability after 2010 due to the reasonable/shorter term contracts for Scutaro, Beltre and Cameron. They don’t have that 35 home run threat in LF any longer but the addition of everything these three position players add to a greater sum than the three they are replacing.

Which, when you think about it Ron, is the same formula that we use to decide who wins a game.